Pope Benedict XVI made his decision to resign the day he received a report detailing “the discovery of a network of gay prelates [Bishops] in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.” So reports the Guardian, a UK newspaper, about a report in La Repubblica, Italy’s largest newspaper:
A potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to the discovery of a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom – the report said – were being blackmailed by outsiders.
The pope’s spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report, which was carried by the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica.
The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called “Vatileaks” affair.
Last May Pope Benedict’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.
According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising “two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red” had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope’s successor upon his election.
The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were “united by sexual orientation”.
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to “external influence” from laymen with whom they had links of a “worldly nature”. The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.
“It appears that the Pope thinks shuffling predatory, pedophile priests and spending more than $2.5 billion in child molestation settlements isn’t a reason to resign, but a few gay priests caught with their pants down is? What an odd moral culture they have developed in Rome, of late,” Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, writes:
This is a fascinating story and I believe every word of it. After all, when you have an institution that cares more about its reputation than protecting innocent, vulnerable kids from child raping priests, anything, no matter how low, is possible.
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